The Secret Doorway

Catherine Sheridan

Little Steps, 2023

236pp., pbk., RRP $A18.95

9781922833297

Anna and her brother Peter are about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime, leaving their home in Australia for a holiday in Ireland. Just before they leave, Anna has a dream about black birds, a huge, gnarly tree and an old key, and being in danger. But despite having special gifts of seeing and feeling things that others cannot, Anna has no idea that what she dreamed may become reality.

Their holiday home backs onto a forest, and having met up with some local kids and enjoying camping in the backyard, when a peculiar fog lit by strange lights roll in,  they can’t resist investigating and find themselves in a world of magical folk and mysterious happenings.  But getting back to their home isn’t as simple as finding the fence and climbing over it… 

The subtitle of this book – the first in a series – is “Four  go on an Adventure” and for those of us of a certain vintage it immediately stirs images of the much-loved stories by Enid Blyton and certainly the connections continue as the story unfolds and the children find themselves in an enchanted forest having to help those who live there but facing situations that have to be confronted and solved.  While there are many portal stories for young independent readers to choose, this is one that is a safe, gentle escape, perhaps the next step on from The Magic Faraway Tree series that they can now read for themselves; maybe  even a gateway to those series about The Adventurous Four,  The Famous Five, and The Secret Seven connecting them not only to the stories of a bygone era that sparked daydreams but also to their older relatives who may have enjoyed them just as much.